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FEW THOUGHTS 



INTERVENTION 



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1882 



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PHILADELPHIA: 

KING & BAIRD, PRINTERS, No. 9 SANSOM STREET. 

MDCCCLII. 



FEW THOUGHTS 



INTERVENTION, 



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Si) n eiii:c.] of £c>ii]3ijib^iliq. 







PHILADELPHIA: 

KING i BAIRD, PRINTERS, No. 9 SANSOM STREET. 
MDCCCLII. 






ii 



The following articles originally appeared in the National Intelli- 
gencer, at different dates from the 17th of November, 1851, until the 
21st of January of this year. They are now printed very much in the 
form in which they originally appeared, — no alterations being made 
except such as the necessity of correcting errors incident to rapid com- 
position seems to require. They relate to a question of foreign policy of 
predominant interest at all times, and especially so at a moment when 
the heretofore steady balance of the Kepublic is threatened with dissolu- 
tion. The danger may have passed, at least so far as it showed itself in 
dark clouds close to the horizon, but the atmosphere is very electrical, 
and seems likely to continue so. The prefatory article, modified only by 
the suppression of a kind personal reference to the Author, is from the 
editorial column of the 20th of December, 1851. 



Philadelphia, January 2Zd, 1852. 



OUR FOREIGN POLICY. 

We trust tliat no reader of this paper will fail to notice the 
patriotic and timely warnings of a correspondent on the pre- 
ceding page, against a heresy of recent importation from foreign 
climes, fraught with consequences fatal to the peace and pros- 
perity of this Republic. 

We had not supposed until we read this letter that the seeds 
of this exotic and Anti-Republican doctrine (of the policy of 
interference in European quarrels) had taken root in the soil 
of Pennsylvania, and especially in the city of Philadelphia, 
where, if any where on this continent, the recollections of the 
history of the War of American Independence might be ex- 
pected to be, for centuries to come, an antidote to any attempt 
to launch the fortunes and the destiny of this Republic on tho 
whirlpool of European politics. We cannot, however, contest the 
facts upon which our correspondent grounds his apprehensions ; 
and we are obliged to him for setting us the example of calling 
attention to a state of things against which it is high time the 
public should be put upon its guard. 

Our correspondent having referred to the expressions used 
by two of our respected fellow-citizens now abroad — for each 
of whom we entertain nothing but good will — in which they have 
represented the United States as disposed, and have in a manner 
pledged this people, to rush into the vortex of European wars 
and revolutions, we now place those speeches, as reported in 
the London papers, before our readers ; which we have hitherto 
tefrained from doing, because we regarded them rather in the 



lifht of sportive or jocular demonstrations, than as any thing 
seriously intended or gravely premeditated. AYe are disposed 
still to regard tliem as such ; but we have no right longer to 
withhold from our readers the fact that others put a different 
construction upon them. 

Certain it is, that any pledges, by whomsoever given, to Eu- 
rope, of intervention by the United States in the schemes of 
Revolutionary leaders or adventurers in any country on the other 
side of*the water, are without warrant in any action or indi- 
cation by this Government, or any countenance in the sober 
sentiment of any considerable part of the American people. 

So far from the invitation to the United States, extended to 
Kossuth and his companions by this Government, being sus- 
ceptible of an interpretation which would place it in the light 
of an engagement to take sides with any party in any civil war 
or commotion in any country in Europe, it may be confidently 
asserted that nothing was further from the thought of Congress, 
in passing it, than to embark this country in any such Quixotic 
enterprise. 

Let the act of Congress speak for itself. That it may do so, 
we hereto annex a copy of it, that every reader may hear what 
it says. It speaks no other language, the reader will perceive, 
than that of praise of the magnanimity of the Turkish Govern- 
ment, and emulation of its disposition to afford a refuge in the 
United States to Louis Kossuth and his associates " in cap- 
tivity." There is not a word nor a syllable intimating an inten- 
tion or disposition on the part of the United States to go a step 
further. There is no politics in the act. It begins and ends 
with humanity, and it had in view no other end. 



A Resolutiox yb/' the relief of Louis Kossuth and his associates, exiles from 

Hungary. 

Whereas the People of the United States sincerely sympathize with the 
Hungarian exiles, Kossuth and his associates, and fully appreciate the 
magnanimous conduct of the Turkish Government in receiving and treating 
those noble exiles with kindness and hospitality ; and whereas, if it be the 
wish of these exiles to emigrate to the United States, and the will of the 
Sultan to permit them to leave his dominions ; Therefore — 

Resolved hy the Senate and Hoitse of Representatives of the United States of 
America in Congress assembled, That the President of the United States be 
and he hereby is requested to authorize the employment of some one of the 
public vessels which may be now cruising in the Mediterranean to receive 
and convey to the United States the said Louis Kossuth and his associates 
in captivity. 

Approved, March 3, 1851. 



NUMBER L* 



I DESIRE to saj a few words, if not of admonition, at least of 
comment on the new state of feeling which is observable here and 
in other large cities of the Union. Were it the mere develope- 
ment of a new popular sentiment or sympathy, barren of all fruit 
of doctrine or practice, I do not know that it would be worth any 
man's while to be disturbed by it. But when, as now, we see 
from a mere sentiment, new dogmas of national policy sprino- 
forth, and find them to be in clear and undisguised variance with 
all which precept and tradition have consecrated, it is time for 
considerate men to rouse themselves, and realize the extent of 
error to which the Nation may be led. In few words, the 
danger we see is this: that on the amiable tendency which our 
countrymen, every now and then, exhibit to sympathise with the 
grievances, real or imaginary, of foreign nations, is about to be 
engrafted the doctrine — new in our history; startling from its 
novelty to those who have studied our history — that it is the duty 
of our Government to take part in European conflicts ; and, in 
the event of a crusade of absolutism or reactionism against liberal 
or constitutional institutions in Europe, our Government is bound 
to take part in actively resisting it ! This is the doctrine, plainly 
stated, of the Consul's speech at Southampton ; and this, 
in another form, less exceptionable I admit in tone, is Mr. 
Walker's opinion on the same occasion, he limiting it merely 
to co-operation with one nation — Great Britain — and that the 
one least likely to need it. It seems to me, that all this is very 
dangerous, and the more dangerous, because there is something in 
the state of the times and our own perplexed relations with at 
least one foreign nation which may make such a heresy popular. 

* National lutelligencer. ITtli November, 1851. 



10 

We have liacl a great many of these sympathies, hut heretofore 
they have been very harmless, and, except in the one instance of 
the first French Revolution, not even in appearance dangerous. 
Such, for example, is our chronic sympathy with Ireland's 
•wrongs, which evaporates in harmless eloquence or in individual 
liberality. Such was our sympathy with Greece, which prac- 
tically led to no bad results, and enriched our parliamentary 
literature with at least one brilliant speech, f Such, too, our 
sympathy with republican South America, whose fruit, after all, 
was only the assertion of the safe principle that any de facto 
Government is entitled to our recognition ; and what I am free 
to call, the less discreet declaration of what is known as the 
Monroe doctrine, which some day may bring forth bitter fruits. 
But, amid all these sympathetic yearnings, no Avhisper was heard 
of the necessity of exorbitant actio?! by the Government. Down 
to this point at least, our feelings were inclined to be historical 
and traditionary. The words of Washington, his exhortation, 
and his example too, still were operative ; not only our memory 
but our heart retained them. We were not ashamed to be 
conservative according to the Washington rule. I fear things 
are now changing for the worse. 

Every now and then, practical embarrassments occur which in- 
crease this liability to error and inconsiderate action. Such was 
the case of the Canada rebellion in 1838, and the McLeod affair ; 
such is the case with the present difficulty with Spain about Cuba. 
But the coincidence cannot have escaped notice that the same 
mind which ten years ago extricated us with honor from one of 
these sympathetic perplexities, is destined, unless it too be warp- 
ed by prevalent heat, to save it from another. Mr. Webster is 
peculiarly competent to accomplish this. The writer of this is no 
flatterer of the Secretary of State, but on a point like this, involv- 
ing statesmanship in its highest sense, the statesmanship that 
knows how to reconcile a jealous sense of honor, always active and 
sometimes excessive in the popular mind, with a sense of riglit and 
duty ; the statesmanship which communes in theory with the ex- 

t " S)irniati;i (1 lu'licvc) fell, uii-\vopt, without a criiiio." 



11 

amples and lessons of the past, and yet has a practical sense of 
what the present shows and the probable future promises, the 
Nation feels that it has, so far as the diplomacy of the Uni- 
ted States is concerned, been safe in the hands of Mr. Webster. 
It was once said, unkindly, of the present Prime Minister of Eng- 
land, that his patriotism was altogether " historical ;" that, though 
he loved his country, it was the country of history and not of the 
living souls which peopled it. Not so our American statesman ; for 
in him, at least as much, it seems to me, as any one of public men, 
can be traced the reciprocal, practical influence of the present and 
the past. Nor does the country think the worse of him because 
his statesmanship is historical. A mere sense of what is going on 
around us is not enough. A public man should be educated under 
the examples of the past. 

But, after all, what a statesman can do or can avert, depends 
more or less on popular sentiment ; and it is the strange perver- 
sion of popular feeling now going on, and observable around us, es- 
pecially in this city and New York, which we have most reason to 
deplore. I repeat, the chronic enthusiasm of Irish sympathizers 
does not give me, for one, any serious cause for discontent. It 
spends itself very innocently. Not so, perhaps, some other ex- 
citements. See, for example, how these heresies have grown in 
the last few months. When the news first arrived of the invasion 
of Cuba and the summary execution done on the captives, the first 
explosion took place. Sympathy with Cuba started out of the 
blood of these victims of folly. The most conservativo presses 
here took up the cause of sympathy and talked fiercely. This 
spasm was rendered harmless by being caricatured in the proceed- 
ings of a town meeting called and conducted by a few restless and 
perverse politicians of the extremest school.* They made the 
matter perfectly ridiculous. Yet it was at this meeting that the 
idea was first broached that, wliile neutrality and non-intervention 

* Not desiring to overstate this burlesque on sympathy, I append two of the res- 
olutions that were unanimously adopted : 

"Resolved, That the President and Congress ought to insist, in their respective 
departments, upon national atonement by Spain for the late atrocious act of as- 
sassination, by execution, without a trial, of citizens of the United States, who like 



12 

might have been once good policy, the time had come, or was com- 
ing, when such old-fashioned notions should be given up, and we 
ought, for what is called the cause of liberty, to meddle in foreign 
conflicts. Exactly the doctrine of Mr. Croskey and Mr. Walker. 
This Cuban spasm temporarily over, the next cause of 
exorbitant sympathy was M. Kossuth ; and here it showed itself 
in a more discreditable form. When, on what turned out to be 
incorrect information, it was supposed that Kossuth and his 
retinue had quarrelled with Captain Long, so rash and precipitate 
was the exotic sentiment that it was at once assumed, our 
oflScers were w^-ong and the foreigners were right ; and this for 
no conceivable reason, as it seemed to me, than that these 
fugitives were foreigners. It is now said that the whole story 
was a fabrication, or exaggeration ; and so much the better. We 
should rejoice at it, if for no other reason than that it renders it 
unnecessary to mingle with our welcome to the strangers, any 
censure on our own gallant seamen.* Diverted, however, from 
this, our sympathisers find contentment in the speeches made by 
our countrymen at the Kossuth celebrations in England, and the 
hope — for it is hardly disguised — that our Executive Government 
is going to enunciate some new principles of policy to be 
embodied in a tart correspondence with the Spanish or Austrian 
Minister. 

Now in this hope I trust the sympathisers may be disappointed. 
It can do no good. The contact with Spain is in any aspect 

Lafayette and others, and in a cause as noble as that of Lafayette and his associates 
from Europe, volunteered their services in aid of liberty in Cuba, and when made 
prisoners of war were publicly butchered without a trial ; or upon a national disa- 
vowal of the atrocity and punishment of its perpetrators by Spain. 

" Resolved, That the President ought to be authorized by Congress to send a Com- 
missioner with a suitable naval and military escort to Cuba, to see to the honora- 
ble interment in that Island of the remains of our murdered compatriots, reported 
to be now the food of dogs, or to bring their honorable remains to the United States 
for interment in the national burial ground, at Washington, with such a monument 
as Congress may direct." 

* Uiiliappily this controversy has since been revived, and a disposition shown, 
the liiut being taken fnnii a most indiscreet passage in one of M. Kossuth's New 
York speeches, to denounce uuheai'd a gallant othcer of the Anurican Navy. 



13 

full of peril to our peace. It is to us wliat Canada was a 
few years ago, with greater temptations and less formidable 
antagonists. And, while many who should know better are 
urging on the Government to what they imagine will be 
the popular diplomacy of threatening foreign nations, I take 
the liberty to express not only a hope widely different, 
but a confident belief, not admitting of a doubt, that the 
Executive of the United States will stand steadfast and 
unmoveable in the faith of moderation, neutrality, and abstinence 
from all concern in foreign affairs not immediately affecting 
ourselves. It was this policy which nearly sixty years ago 
enabled a British statesman of liberal principles, contrasting our 
policy with that of Great Britain, to speak of the United States 
" as rising by Neutrality above the nations of Europe, with a 
simple dignity that wins the respect, the confidence, and the 
affection of the world."f 



NUMBER 11. 

It seems to me, an anxious if not watchful observer of the 
signs of our times, that M. Kossuth made a great mistake on 
the very threshold of our soil ; one, too, which, unless explained 
or disavowed by him and his enthusiastic admirers, may lead to 
untoward results. In his speech at Staten Island, in reply to 
Mr. Locke, he is reported by a friendly hstener (the New York 
Times) to have said : " If this be so, I have most certainly the 
right to say that it is the duty of consistency and logic for the 
people of the United States to recognise the declaration of inde- 
pendence of Hungary as an existing law, as the only existing 
public law, of my poor down-trodden country. This is what I 
expect to find here ; and, ivhatever he the declaration of your 

f Sheeidax's Speech, January, 1794, in reply to Lord Mornington. 



14 

Grovernment, I know that I have the honor to be in a country 
where the sovereign is not the Croveriwient hut the People, 
[great cheering.] and where every man in office must he the 
representative of the direction which the public spirit of the 
people takes." 

Now, what does this mean ? Is it an appeal by a stranger 
from the constituted authority of the land to the constituents ? 
And, if it be so, from .Avhat act or expression of constituted au- 
thority is the appeal taken ? What is " the declaration of the 
Government" from which M. Kossuth dissents ? Nay, further, 
what does he exactly mean by " the Government ?" Is it the 
Executive, whose message of kindness and judicious sympathy 
must have been (we are bound to presume so) the first thing 
M. Kossuth read ? Or is it Congress, whose act it was to succor 
and bring him here, and who are at this moment deliberating 
with no more than decent circumspection as to their mode of wel- 
come ? Nay, let us ask one further pregnant question : Is it not 
an appeal from what M. Kossuth anticipates will be the decision 
of the Government, when he demands of them the immediate 
recognition of the Hungarian Republic as an existing institution 
— a de' facto Government? 

These are questions of some import, which, before this publica- 
tion sees the light, will have occurred to thousands of reflecting 
minds, and which, we hope, may be satisfactorily answered in 
one of the earliest of the many speeches M. Kossuth, in his 
pilgrimage, is destined to make. If not answered, the inference 
is fair that he thinks it part of his function, in a certain state of 
things, to appeal from the Government to the People. Then we 
know where to find him. Our history has, however, at least one 
example to guide and control even public sentiment ; and j\[. 
Kossuth ought soon to have his attention directed to it. 

Among the books which this intelligent stranger is reported to 
have sent for immediately on his arrival on Staten Island were 
the Life and Writings of Washington.* If he will turn over their 
leaves carefully, he will find, somewhere in the neighborhood of 

* M. Kossuth had arrived at Staten Island a few days before December Gth. j 



15 

the date 1793, a precedent of an appeal from the Government 
to the people, and its result. I refer of course to Genet, who, 
unlike M. Kossuth, not only had an authorized and official con- 
nexion with this Government, but who, besides, represented an 
actual, de facto, responsible, republican sovereignty. In the 
celebrated conversation with Mr. Dallas — an unofficial and 
friendly conference, and therefore to be likened to one of M. 
Kossuth's speeches — Genet said distinctly that he meant to 
appeal from, not the Government — for here Genet was less offen- 
sive to the constituted authorities generally of the land — but 
"from the President to the people of the United States," and, 
in a letter of June, 1793, to the Secretary of State, Mr. Jeffer- 
son, after contrasting what he calls the narrow selfish policy 
of the United States with the generous friendship of France, he 
says: "/*t is not tims that the American people wish tve should 
he treated.'" The end of this every American student is familiar 
with ; for, if there be any one point of history on which all 
parties unite, Whig and Democrat, Conservative and Radical, 
it is this : that Genet was a wrong-headed, intrusive foreigner, 
and that General Washington and Mr. Jefferson properly 
rebuked him. 

Nor is the analogy overstrained, or at all unfavorable to Genet. 
He was the accredited representative of an existing, not " down- 
trodden," Republic, threatened, to be sure, by foreign enemies 
invading her soil, but with better chances of permanence than 
had Hungary when President Taylor sent Mr. Mann to Europe 
on an errand of friendliness, and certainly with more of an 
existence than poor Hungary has now, when her patriots are 
dispersed, and no de facto sign remains but M. Kossuth's title by 
courtesy, of Governor. Nay, more, Genet had what he thought 
were actual grievances to complain of. The Little Sarah [le petit 
Democrat) had been overhauled at Chester, and Captain Dale 
was cruising in the Delaware Bay on the look-out for French 
letters of marque. M. Kossuth has no grievances, real or imagi- 
nary, against this Government. He is here the Nation's guest, 
in one sense. Hither he has been brought, rescued by the action 



16 

of '' the Government" from dismal captivity and exile in a heathen 
land. Here he is, nestling in the People's heart, with no privation 
to endure, no danger to encounter, no Austrian spy to dog his 
footsteps, no Muscovite agent to threaten him with harm. Why, 
then, should the first words he utters in answer to shouts of wel- 
come be words that infuse suspicion and distrust and doubt ? 
Why should he so soon make up his mind that he and his kind 
American hosts are not to get along harmoniously ? 

All this is the more significant, inasmuch as M. Kossuth is no 
frothy declaimer, but a singularly expert master of precise lan- 
guage. His familiarity with the exact meaning of foreign words 
seems a kind of inspiration. We suspect he is never unintelli- 
gible, except when he means to be so ; as when, in reply to a 
radical address somewhere in England, he announced one of his 
cardinal principles to be " the principle of the solidarity of the 
People and the independence of Nations." But at Staten Island 
there is no mystic phraseology. Every idea he enunciated was 
as sharp and clear in its outline as the headlands of the island 
itself in the cold December sunshine ; and the idea — the leading, 
controlling idea of his speech, and that which was " greatly 
cheered" — unquestionably was, that unless the Government did 
what he ingeniously and cleverly assumed the orators of Staten 
Island meant to do when they greeted him as " Governor" — that 
is, recognise Hungary as an independent Government — he should 
appeal from the Government to the People. Against this intru- 
siveness, I, for one, most earnestly protest. 

That M. Kossuth may have some reason for this experiment we 
have no doubt, and it may be, too, that a remark so susceptible of 
misconstruction may be soon retracted or disavowed. We think 
we can see some reason for it in the tone of the British liberal press 
just as he was leaving England. The London Examiner of Novem- 
ber 15th is now before me, published on the eve of M. Kossuth's 
embarkation. Every body knows this to be a press ecstatic in its 
sympathies with Hungary, the medium of Landor's beautiful Odes 
to Kossutli ; and yet, prominent in its columns of that date, is an 
editorial written in a high tone of dignified and cordial eloquence, 



17 

in which the idea is more than hinted at, that the Hungarian pa- 
triot should for the future talk more of his country than of himself. 
"We must be permitted," says the Examiner, "to regret that he has not 
on all occasions spoken as the representative of Hungary. We are quite sure 
that in so speaking he would not have lost one of the golden opinions from 
all sorts of men which he now holds in England ; and most certainly he 
would have held them more securely. We believe M. Kossuth to be a true 
patriot, as we see him to be a man of genius and an orator ; but the suspi- 
cion reluctantly presses itself upon us that he is deficient in the sterner stuff 
which gives definite form and completeness to the heroic mind. M. Kossuth 
seems unwilling to turn any man away without a smile, and is not quite so 
guarded as he should be in the manner of his smiling. The consequence is, 
that his outline daily becomes more indistinct ; we see him as through a 
mist; and, unless this mist be dispelled by a full breath of plain speaking 
upon sundry matters during the next day or two, we shall feel the union of 
ideas between M. Kossuth and Hungary to be less complete than we have 
felt them hitherto." 

May it not be, (we throw out this conjecture in kindness,) that 
this earnest and friendly admonition, fruitless of results in the 
complications of British society and politics, has been the moving 
cause of the very plain-spoken indiscretion of his Staten Island 
speech, and of his snatching up so quickly the idea that tlie Peo- 
ple wished to have Hungary at once and at all hazards recog- 
nized ? If not this, what was it ? Surely not petulant disappoint- 
ment (Kossuth, we trust, is too great a man for that) because Con- 
gress took a little time for deliberation, and had not decided, Mr. 
Foote's resolution having been withdrawn, and Mr. Seward's not 
then adopted. Be this as it may, M. Kossuth and every other 
welcome fugitive from abroad should understand that he commits 
a fatal error who threatens, or prom.ises, or intimates, in any sup- 
posed contingency, an appeal from the American Government to 
the American People. 



NUMBER 111.='^ 



THE MONROE DECLARATION. 



If ever respect for past example ; if ever a moderate knowledge 
of the political liistoiy of the last sixty, or fifty, or twenty years, 
(for I am content to ask but little,) were needed, it is now, when 
a foreigner comes amongst us to set to rights our notions and 
traditional opinions ; to tell us, after the study of a week, what 
Washington's Farewell Address really meant, and to reverse the 
elementary principles of our foreign polic3^ M. Kossuth's New 
York banquet speech is a bold one. It is, from its plausible 
sophistry, a dangerous one. It is dangerous, too, in this, that 
while its doctrines may find an echo in the minds of politicians 
reckless in their aspirations of the dangers of the instant future, 
they become impressive on the popular mind by the bold 
assumption of facts which they contain. I do not pause to 
vindicate the Washington policy from the new Hungarian gloss, 
but I do desire to say a few words on two, or strictly speaking, 
(for they may be considered together,) one more recent matter of 
history which M. Kossuth, relying no doubt on some not very 
accurate purveyor, has strangely misstated. I mean the Monroe 
Declaration of 1823, and the Panama Mission ; both, I submit, 
very unlucky precedents to be cited for active intervention just 
now. 

Rather more than a. quarter of a century has passed since the 
more recent of these incidents of our story, and yet it so happens 
that three of the distinguished men of those days are prominent 
actors yet, ready to bear their testimony to the actual truth of 
history, whether it makes for or against this new expounder of 
our duties. In 1825, (the time of the Panama mission,) Mr. 
Clay was Secretary of State, Mr. Webster a member of 
the House of Representatives, and Mr. Berrien an influential 
leader of the Jackson party in the Senate. They are yet with 

* National IntLlligoiuer, December 13, 1851. 



19 

us, ready to say a word for the good, old-fashioned, homely 
doctrine of rigid abstinence from foreign politics — the doctrine 
which Mr. Van Buren, another survivor of that day, said in the 
Senate he believed was "as firmly fixed as the Republic itself." 
Nay, more, the distinguished negotiator, who knows more than 
any one else of the real origin of the Monroe declaration, is still 
living in this neighborhood, and he too could say with emphasis 
how strangely perverted or superficial must be M. Kossuth's 
knowledge on the subject to which I refer, and how absurdly over- 
strained this declaration is, when thus invoked as authority for a 
European crusade. I, an humble student of our history, appeal 
from M. Kossuth and his New York friends to these living 
practical statesmen of our land. 

Now, what is it M. Kossuth says ? After a summary 
demolition of the Washington doctrine; after rejecting it as 
authority because too ancient, he comes down to the fresher 
precedents of 1823 or 1826. In the following extract we desire 
to note that the italics are not ours, but those of the original 
report. After stating rather strongly the Monroe declaration 
" as a pledge to take up arms," M. Kossuth says : 

" I beg leave to desire you to remember that this declaration of President 
Monroe was not only approved and confirmed by the people of the United 
States, hut that Great Britain itself joined the United States in the declaration 
of this decision and this policy." 

Now, the words in italics mean either that" the declaration, 
whatever it was, was the contemporaneous and joint act of the 
two Governments whom M. Kossuth is so anxious to afiiliate, or 
that Great Britain followed the example of the United States in 
its annunciation of prospective intervention. It so happens neither 
is the fact. It was not the joint act of the two Governments ; 
and if there be any question of the precedence, England was, as 
Major Downing said of himself and General Jackson, " if any 
thing a leetle ahead." Let us see hoAV soon history blows away 
the froth and varicolored bubbles of M. Kossuth's rhetoric. 

The Monroe declaration is contained in the Message of the 
2d December, 1823. It was two-fold: 1. A bold assertion, in 



20 

language rather stronger and broader than its meaning, that no 
European Power would thereafter be permitted to colonize on any 
part of the American continents ;* and, 2. A guarded but distinct 
intimation that anj interference by absolute Europe with repub- 
lican Spanish America would be considered (mark the cautious 
words !) as " dangerous to our peace and safety, and the mani- 
festation of an unfriendly disposition to the United States." 
Now, this is all ! With the first part of the declaration neither 
M. Kossuth nor we, just now, have any concern, more especially 
as it unluckily and unpicturesquely happens to be in direct con- 
junction with a fervent and sincere assurance that " the United 
States is desirous of manifesting the great value which they have 
invariably attached to the friendship of the Emperor of Russia, 
and their solicitude to cultivate the best understanding with his 
Government." — [Message of 1823.] It is the second section of 
this declaration on which M. Kossuth has been induced to rely, 
and which so entirely misleads him. Of its meaning I may have 
a word to say presently. Its history, strangely misunderstood, 
in the newborn zeal for fraternity with Great Britain, is more 
material. It is or ought to be familiar to every student. 

Let M. Kossuth, or any one else who desires on short notice to 
" cram" on this topic, procure Mr. Rush's Reminiscences of his 
Residence in London, and there he will learn the slow gestation 
and doubtful throes which preceded this cautious manifesto. The 
story is soon told. Mr. Canning was just maturing his scheme 
of polity, by Avhich not only Great Britain was extricated from 
the Holy Alliance, but saved from being embroiled in a crusade 
quite as attractive and far more feasible than that which 
M. Kossuth proposes for us. He, the disciple of Pitt, a Mar 
minister, with the fresh memories of thirty years of a war of 

* Mr. Rusu mentions that Mr. Canning rather took umbrage at the broad 
language of the President about the American continents, and inquired (jocularly, 
I incline to suspect) how it would be if Captain I'arry, then on his i^Vi'ctic expe- 
dition, should happen to discover and colonize some new Polar land ? To which 
Mr. Rush discreetly and gravely replied, " When such a case occurred, it 
■would be considered." — Rush's Residence in London, vol. 2, p. 471. 



21 

opinion, was in 1822 and 1823 the European man of peace and 
real non-intervention. Nor is there, to my mind, a brighter 
page of British history — for Peace has its victories as well as 
War — from the resignation of Sir Robert Walpole downward, 
than that which records Mr. Canning's heroic struggle, at the 
end of Lord Liverpool's ministry, to keep England neutral and at 
peace, and to repress the discontent of the Tory ultraists and the 
Whig opposition arrayed against him; nor do the records of 
Parliament contain a more brilliant speech than he made in 
defence of this very policy, in March, 1823, in reply to Lord 
John Russell, {Hansard, vol x., p. 1232,) who, with his party, 
had urged England to go to war in behalf of the Spanish 
constitutionalists. 

It was at this crisis, and with Mr. Canning, that the Monroe 
Declaration really originated. As early as March 1823, he 
broached the idea of resisting any attempt by any other Power 
than Spain to subjugate the Spanish colonies, in a despatch to Sir 
Charles Stewart at Paris, and in October of the same year re- 
peated the same idea more peremptorily to Prince de Polignac. 
{JIansard, x. 708.) In the interval, he was busy in persuading 
Mr. Rush, the American Minister, to join him in the threat, or 
protest, or intervention, or whatever it is to be called, and Mr. 
Rush was as anxiously and resolutely resisting these urgencies or 
blandishments, and standing by the old-fashioned doctrine of 
" stopping on the edge of our own soil." " Would not," said Mr. 
Rush, (I quote his despatch to Mr. Adams of September, 1823,) 
" such a step wear the appearance of the United States implicating 
themselves in the political connexions of Europe?" "The for- 
eign pohcy of the United States has been essentially bottomed on 
the great maxim of preserving peace and harmony with all nations, 
without offending any, or forming entangling alliances with any. 
Upon the institutions as upon the dissensions of European Powers, 
the Government and people of the United States might form and 
even express their speculative opinions ; but it has been no part of 
their past conduct to interfere with the one, or, being unmolested 



22 

themselves, to become parties to tlie other."* So wrote Mr. 
Rush, even on this American question, and vain was Mr. Can- 
ning's logic for nearly six months to lead him astray from the doc- 
trine of non-intervention. The most that he was willing to do 
was to unite in such a declaration, if Great Britain would at once 
acknowledge the independence of Spanish America ; but, without 
that practical, substantial boon, he would not and did not budge 
from the yet American doctrine of neutrality. Now, all this M. 
Kossuth may denounce as "diplomacy ;" but to me, a plain Amer- 
ican man, it seems like good sense and honest dealing. 

And well might Mr. Rush hold back. The principles of "Wash- 
ington were not yet discarded. His precepts and bright example 
were neither rusty, nor varnished over. The Government at home, 
the President and his Cabinet, then comprising Adams and Cal- 
houn and Crawford, had not been lectured out of their ancient el- 
ementary faith. In February of the next year, (1824,) after the 
Monroe declaration which is now imagined to involve this propa- 
gandist principle, Mr. Adams directed Mr. Rush to inform the 
Greek Deputies in London that the United States could do no- 
thing for them, and rested the refusal, not on the want of sympa- 
thy, but on the ground of " constitutional international duty." 
Nay, more, the then Secretary of State, (and we wish he were 
here yet to utter his warnings,) than whom a truer friend of uni- 
versal liberty never lived, had put on record his opinions as to 
what was the duty of the United States. A short time before, 
. whilst Spanish America was in her most perilous struggle, and a 
year before she had been recognised by the United States, Mr. 
Adams had defined his opinions as to non-intervention in words 
not to be misunderstood : 

* Mr. Webster's despatch of the 12th January, 1852, to Mr. Rives, has in one sen- 
tence a condensation of our duty to ourselves. 

" Although our Government is now the only republic ranking among nations of 
the first class, we cling to its principles with increased afiFection. Long experi- 
ence, has convinced us of its practicability to do good, and its power to maintain 
liberty and order. AVe know that it has conferred the greatest blessings on the 
counti'y, and raised her to eminence and distinction among the nations ; and if we 
are destined to stand the only great republican nation, so tve shall still stand." 



, 23 

" America," said he, " has abstained from interference in the concerns of 
others, even when the conjlict has been for priiicqAes to which she clings as to 
the last vital drop which visits the heart." " Wherever the standard of freedom 
has been unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions, and her prayers 
be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the 
well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion 
and vindicator only of her own." — Mr. Adams' oration, 1821.* 

The next step in the busmess was the transmission bj Mr. 
Rush to the Secretary of State, in October, of Mr, Canning's 
decided conversation with Prince Polignac, and the latter's 
disclaimer of any adverse designs on the part of France ; and 
then followed, in December, the President's Message, with its 
cautious phraseology. 

This is the true history of the Monroe declaration, divested of 
rhetoric and exaggeration. It had reference strictly to American 
affairs and interests, and M. Kossuth and his adherents presume 
largely on a predominant ignorance on this subject of our history 
when they invoke it as a precedent or a qualification of the 
"Washington doctrine. Even on that Ayjierican subject, Mr. Clay, 

* It is within the memory of the writer that jNIr. Adams' Fourth of July Speech 
of 1821, he then being Secretary of State, was much and justly censured for its 
uncourteous language towards a friendly power — one which, like Austria now 
a days, was treating us and our Government at least inoifensively. Mr. Secretary 
Canning's speech in April, 1823, contains a passage full of practical good sense, 
worth a thought now a days, and amongst ourselves. " I doubt," said he, 
" whether it is wise, even in this House, to indulge in this sort of I'hetoric ; to 
call 'wretches' and 'barbarians,' 'tyrants' and 'despots,' ' tramplers on the 
rights and liberties of mankind,' and a hundred other hard names, powers with 
whom, after all, if the map of Europe cannot be altogether cancelled, we must 
maintain some diplomatic intercourse. I doubt whether these sallies or raillery 

these flowers of Billingsgate — are calculated to soothe any more than to adoi-u ; 

whether on some occasion or other, we may not find that those on whom they are 
lavished have not been utterly unsusceptible of feelings of irritation and resent- 
ment. 

' Medio cle fonte leporum 
Surget amari aliquid, quod in ipsia floribus angat.' 

" But be the language of good sense or good taste in this House what it may, 
clear I am that no Minister would be justified in risking the friendship of any 
foreign power, or the peace of his own, by coarse reproach and galling invective ; 
and that even while we are pleading for the independence of nations, it is 
expedient to respect those to whom we plead." 



24 ., 

the great champion of Spanish American independence, and 
whose quasi opposition to Mr. Monroe's administration was the 
spur to prick the sides of their intent, when he became a Cabinet 
Minister pronounced strict neUtrahty to be our duty, and our 
policy too. " In this war, so long raging between Spain and her 
colonies," said Mr. Clay, in a letter to Mr. Middleton, asking 
the mediation of Russia, " the United States have been inactive 
and neutral spectators of the passing scenes." They were so 
because it was their well ascertained duty to be so. Mr. 
Webster's language, about the same time, was to the same 
effect. Though he was willing to give the most liberal construc- 
tion to the Monroe declaration, in his speech on the Panama 
Mission he pronounced it as only and strictly applicable to 
questions of American interest. 

Is it not then bold and dangerous for a stranger to come at 
this day amongst us and try to reverse these elementary doctrines, 
this household faith, this principle of abstinence from all concern 
in European politics, which is consecrated in the example and 
precept of every great man, living and dead, of the Republic ? 
This is a question on which thoughtful men may Avell pause. 



NUMBER lY. 



THE PANAMA MISSIOIST. 



Before noticing the other precedent which INI. Kossuth's pur- 
veyors have dug up to give color to his intervention principles, 
I may be allowed to observe that the mystic language of his first 
speeches is now changed into a bolder tone, and that, as the 
time draws near for his " message to Congress," he is becoming 
less and less oracular. M. Kossuth's speech of Friday to the 
Kew York lawyers is certainly a pregnant manifesto. It is cal- 



25 

culated, one would think, to Inspire his fiercest friends with doubt 
and serious misgiving. On the 11th of this month Mr. Cass 
said, in the Senate, speaking of M. Kossuth's schemes of inter- 
vention : 

" / take [it) for granted that there is not a sane man in this country loho 
dreams, even of intervening by force in this affair — of sending a fleet to cover 
the Adriatic, and to blockade the lagoons of old Venice and the port of 
Trieste, or another to take its station on the Sound, and close the entrance 
of the Baltic to the ships of Russia." 

Now, it SO happens that on the very day this speech appeared 
in print, M. Kossuth used the following language to the New 
York Bar, who received it with cheers and laughter, (not ironical,) 
and loud applause : 

" "Well, I am not the man to decline the consequences of my principles. 
I will not steal into your sympathies by slippery evasion. Yes, gentlemen, 
I confess, should Russia not respect such a declaration of your country, then 
you are obliged, literally obliged, to go to tear, or else be prepared to be degraded 
before mankind from your dignity. Yes, that looidd be the case." 

And this foreign exposition of American duty, this bold threat 
of American degradation, this prophecy of American disgrace, 
this insane (according to Governor Cass) dream of instant war, 
was greeted with cheers and enthusiastic applause by the New York 
Bar ; and when, a few minutes afterwards, one of their number, 
startled into sobriety by the fearful doctrines thus enunciated, 
ventured a word of judicious remonstrance — a Avord of excuse for 
the doctrines of Washington — he was shouted down and hissed 
and jeered by these bacchanalian barristers. Now, if this bar 
meeting be a fair representation of the legal profession in the 
city of New York, and this be their professional fellow-feeling and 
sense of decorum, I, for one, as an humble member of the profes- 
sion, claim no communion with it. The treatment of Mr. Duer 
was a sad illustration of the influence of this oratorical Missionary 
of false doctrine, operating on the post-prandial sensibilities of a 
learned professional brotherhood. I do not, however, observe 
many of those whom I have been taught to regard as the leaders 
of the New York Bar, figuring on this inflammatory occasion. 



26 

One other word incidentally. M. Kossuth, after citing, as his 
American authorities for the new crusade, Mr. Walker and Mr. 
Croskey, appeals with great triumph to Mr. Richard Rush, as 
having, in a little publication last summer, sanctioned the same 
folly. Now, happening to know something of this very publica- 
tion and its aim, I am content to appeal to Mr. Rush himself, 
and to assert most confidently that no word he ever wrote or 
uttered on this subject of non-intervention was meant to counte- 
nance such heresies as M. Kossuth is now preaching. He knows 
— no one better — how absurdly overstrained this Monroe declara- 
tion has been ; and, overstrained and stretched as it has been, 
how far short it falls of sanctioning our involving ourselves directly 
in the sharp and ragged net-work of European politics. 

But one word as to M. Kossuth's other precedent, the Congress 
of Panama ; and I am the more glad to refer to it, as its history 
is rich with authority on the subject. On the 6th of December, 
1825, the Democratic party was startled by the following passage 
in Mr. Adams' message to Congress. After speaking of a Con- 
gress of Representatives from American and Republican States, 
(not, as M. Kossuth suggests, fraternization Avith a European 
Monarchy,) he said : 

" This invitation has been accepted, and Ministers on the part of the 
United States will be commissioned to attend at those deliberations, and to 
take part in them, so far as may he comjMtible with that nndralihj from 
which it is neither our intention nor the desire of the other American States that 
loe should depart." 

On the 26th of December he accompanied the nomination of 
Mr. Anderson and Mr. Sergeant with a special message to the 
Senate : 

" It will be seen," says this message, that the United States neither intend 
nor are expected to take part in any deliberation of a belligerent character ; 
that the motive of their attendance is neither to contract alliances, nor to 
engage in any undertaking, or project importing hostility to any other 
nation." 

To precisely the same effect, wrote Mr. Clay, in his report as 



27 

Secretary of State to the President, and lils correspondence with 
the Mexican and Columbian Ministers at Washington. 

On this guarded, cautious suggestion, the flame of opposition 
broke forth in both Houses of Congress, and every leading mem- 
ber of the Democratic party, some of whom are yet living, and 
some, covered with honors, gone to their account, took open and 
decided ground against the mission, on this very ground of its con- 
travention of the Washington and Jefferson doctrine of rigid neu- 
trality. I appeal, without having space to go into details, to the 
history of Congress for confirmation of this. There was no single 
exception. There was perfect, thorough unanimity. At what 
point of time exactly M. Kossuth and his purveyors assert the 
Washington doctrine to have entirely worn out, I do not pretend 
to determine ; but certain it is that, as late as 1825-6— though 
applicable to a strictly American question affecting only American 
interests — at a moment, too, when European squadrons had been 
scouring our seas, and Cuba and Porto Rico were in danger of 
transfer, then at least the doctrine was orthodox. On the 16th Ja- 
nuary, 1826, Nathaniel Macon, from the Committee on Foreign Af- 
fairs, reported against the mission, using these emphatic words : 

" The first question which suggested itself to the committee, on the very 
threshold of their investigation, was what cogent reasons now existed for 
adopting this new and untried measure, so much in conflict with the whole 
course of policy uniformly and haj.pily pursued by the United States, from 
almost the very creation of the Government to the present hour. By the 
principles of this policy, inculcated by our wisest statesmen in former days, 
and approved by the experience of all subsequent times, the true interest of 
the United States was supposed to be promoted by avoiding all entangling 
connexions with any other nation whatever. Steadily pursuing this course, 
while they have been desirous to manifest the most cordial good will to all 
nations, and to maintain with each, relations of perfect amity and of com- 
merce, regulated and adjusted by rules of the most fair, equal, and just 
reciprocity, the United States have hitherto seduously abstained from 
associating themselves in any other way, even with those nations for whose 
welfare the most lively sensibility has been at all times felt and otherwise 

manifested. 

" During the conflict for freedom and independence in which these new 
States of America were so long engaged with their former sovereign, 



28 

although every heart in the United States beat high in sympathy with them, 
and fervent aspirations were hourly put up for their success, and although 
the relations then existing with Spain were well calculated to excite strong 
irritation and resentment on our part, yet the Government of the United 
States, convinced of the propriety of a strict adherence to the principles it 
has ever proclaimed as the rule of its conduct in relation to other nations, 
forbore to take any part in this struggle, and maintained the most exact 
neutrality between these belligerents. Nor would it even recognise the 
independence of these new Republics until they had become independent 
in fact, and the situation of their ancient sovereign in relation to them 
was such as to manifest that he ought no longer to be held responsible for 
their acts." 

So wrote Mr. Macon then. Now really there seems embodied 
in this extract, full and precise Democratic authority against each 
and every demand that M. Kossuth makes, including that for a 
recognition of the independence of " down-trodden Hungary as a 
fact;" and certainly his 

" Old experience did attain 
To something like prophetic strain ;" 

prophetic of the very danger with which M. Kossuth now threat- 
ens us, when, in another part of the same report, Mr. Macon said : 

" The United States, who have grown up in happiness to their present 
prosperity by a strict observance of their old, well-known course of policy, 
and by manifesting entire good will and most profound respect for all other 
nations, must prepare to embark their future destinies upon an unknown 
and turbulent ocean, directed by little experience, and destined for no certain 
haven." 

On this hint and this warning, the Democratic party, in and out 
of Congress, spoke out in the loudest and most distinct tones, as- 
serting and re-asserting; the old-fashioned doctrine in the broadest 
form. I have not at hand all the debates on this subject, even in 
the Senate ; but can cite extracts enough on a topic on Avhich the 
Democratic party knew no dissent. Foremost in the array was 
the late Judge Woodbury, who went so far as to repudiate the idea 
of our resisting the transfer of Cuba to a European Power. On 
the duty of neutrality he had no reserve : 



i 



29 

• 

" The United States have not agreed to bear the brunt of the contest in any 
foreign war, or support the independence or form of Government of any 
nation or State, except our own nation and those of the States composing 
our own Confederacy. Any such agreement" [as M. Kossuth recommends 
•with England as to European politics] " would violate the Constitution, and 
plunge us into a vortex of new coalitions and confederacies abhoiTcnt to 
every feeling and maxim of our most venerated fathers." 

" Why," added he, " quit our own to stand on foreign ground ? Why join 
our fortunes in any case with Powers of another origin, another tongue, 
another faith? Are we so moonstruck, or so little employed at home, as, in 
the eloquent language of the President on another occasion, to wander abroad 
in search of foreign monsters to destroy ?" 

Mr. Van Buren, wlio ought to be authority with at least some 
of M. Kossuth's adherents, was, if possible, clearer still. Reading 
the Farewell Address on this very topic — that Address which the 
Hungarian expounder would fritter away or obliterate — Mr. Van 
Buren, speaking with unwonted earnestness, said : " I hope to God 
the time will never arrive when an apology will be necessary for 
reading to an American Senate any word or precept that "Wash- 
ington ever uttered." And then he added the memorable woi'ds: 

" If it were proposed to form a connexion with any European Power, such 
as is now designed with the Spanish American States, it is hoped and be- 
lieved that the measure ivould not meet with one approving voice ; shall I say, 
on this floor '? No, not in the lohole country. At this moment the United 
States, thanks to the wisdom of their early counsels, are unfettered. No 
Government has a right to demand our aid or interference in any of the 
changes in the condition of the world. Come what may, we are now unem- 
barrassed. Until lately, I had flattered myself that the acknowledged obli- 
gation on the part of our Government to maintain that [condition was as 
firmly fixed as its republican character. I had the .best reason to think so, 
because I knew it to be a principle in our public policy, which had for its 
support all that is instructive in experience, all that is venerable in autho- 
rity. That authority is no less than the parting admonition of the Fa- 
ther of his Country. The earnest, eloquent, and impressive appeals upon 
this subject, contained in his Farewell Address, are yet, and will I trust long 
remain, fresh in our recollections ; nor were the sentiments he thus avowed 
mere speculative opinions, founded on an abstract consideration of the sub- 
ject. No ! They were sentiments matured by reflection and confirmed by 
actual experience, of the practical results which had arisen from a connexion 
of the charactor he so ardently and so justly deprecated. No, thank Heaven, 



30 

a policy so opposite to all the feelings of the American people ; so adverse, as I 
firmly believe it to be, to its true interests, has no friend, at least no advocate, on 
this floor." 

In the House of Representatives, where the current, in the same 
direction, was quite as steady, the late President, Mr. Polk, used 
language, if possible, more emphatic, repudiating even the Monroe 
Declaration and all possible inferences horn it, {Grales and Sea- 
ton's Debates, Vol 2, p. 2473,) and this, I repeat, was the uniform 
language of the leaders of the Democratic party then on this question 
of meddling abroad even in American affairs. And how was it 
answered ? In the first instance, by the President in his special 
message to the House of Representatives, and afterward in De- 
bate, on the ground that the mission was purely American and de- 
fensive ; and that it was necessary to prevent the interference of 
Europe with us and ours, simply because we never had interfered 
and never meant to interfere with her. The results were a reluc- 
tant acquiescence by Congress in the mission, and its utter failure 
to accomplish any one good result, from the impossibility of bring- 
ino- into harmonious council, representatives of countries so utter- 
ly alien in sentiment and habits of thought as were we and our 
proposed fellow-laborers. M. Kossuth's league between Great 
Britain, Hungary, and the United States will be at least as desti- 
tute of cohesiveness. 

Such is M. Kossuth's only other precedent, and but for these 
two isolated and most inapplicable authorities, he finds the whole 
history of the country opposed to his schemes. And yet he is 
cheered on and encouraged; and now approaches the seat of 
government, not as the grateful exile, to utter modest thanks for 
being rescued from the hands of the oppressor, but, as it were, to 
force from Congress a recognition of his new principle. There 
is no mistaking his demeanor now. The speech to the New York 
lawyers, with its bold avowals, its ill-concealed sarcasms, its 
threats, shows conclusively that the festivities of the metropolis 
have raised if not turned his head.* Every thing contributes to 

* In tliis speech, M. Kossuth began with a diatribe, most inappropriate, if in 
earnest, against codification. It is more tban probable tliat in the following 



ol 

it. From the worse than folly of the Revolutionary Loan, 
managed just now by respectable men, but to end, (mark my 
words,) as did the Greek contributions years ago, in crime and 
disgrace, down to the grotesque exhibition in the Brooklyn 
church, where, in the sacred house of God, ladies waved their 
handkerchiefs and men cheered, and the organ and the band 
played " Yankee Doodle" and the Marseilles Hymn — all combine 
to intoxicate and mislead. Where it will stop, or how be arrested, 
who, in an excitable community like ours, can venture to foretell ? 
M. Kossuth's mission, strange as it may seem, is mingling too 
with elements of social discord to which one hardly likes to allude, 
but which an observing eye easily detects — religious or sectarian 
feeling and sectional prejudices. I have no sympathy with the 
other foreign element which seems to be enlisted against his 
views ; but I see new strifes fermenting, new fires kindling on the 
advent of this missionary of novelty; new and unwholesome 
excitements smouldering and ready to burst forth ; and the fear 
darkens my mind that on the altar of this new and yet unknown 
divinity (for no idol ever had more fervent worshippers) may be 
sacrificed principles of Government consecrated by unbroken tra- 
dition and the authority of the good and wise of every age of the 
Republic. 

Grave responsibility— I say it most respectfully— rests on the 
Executive Department of this Government. Its action is looked 
to with deep sohcitude by the vast conservative body which is not 
yet swallowed up in the whirl of New York enthusiasm. The 
President has done much for the Nation in the cause- of domestic 

strange passage lie was aiming quite as much at a written constitution as a code. 

"You have a great authority for codification— Livingston ; and really it may 
be presumptuous to state an opinion contrary to his-still I confess I am no 
friend of codification. [Laughter and applause.] 

I am no friend of it, because I am a friend of free, unarrested Progress. And 
a code arrests progress. It is an iron hand, which hinders the circulation of 
intelligence, and fetters its development, which freely must go on towards bound- 
less perfection— the destiny of humanity." [Applause.] _ 

This is sheer nonsense, as applied to codification-but full of bitter significance, 
when levelled at that constitution which creates a strictly limited government. 



32 

peace and concord. He has tried to enforce practical neutrality 
•when it was threatened by private adventurers escaping from 
our own soil. He will, I doubt not — for I write with the con- 
fidence of one who has known him long — face the storm of folly 
and rashness which a stranger is seeking to arouse amongst us. 
As little fear ought we have of the course to be taken by that 
Department which has charge of our foreign relations ; for more 
than once has Mr. Webster put on record his views of our duty, 
not in speeches, but in State papers that are part of the perma- 
nent archives of the Nation. As far back as 1841 he told Great 
Britain that " the United States never have fallen into doubts, 
elsewhere entertained, of the true extent of the duties of neu- 
trality. They have held that neutral States are bound to be 
strictly/ neutraV And in the letter to Mr. Hulsemann, in 1850, 
he again said that " the interest taken by the United States in 
the revolutionary events of Europe has not proceeded from] any 
disposition to depart from that neutrality toward foreign 

POWERS AVHICII IS AMONG THE DEEPEST PRINCIPLES AND MOST 
CHERISHED TRADITIONS OF THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE 

UNION." 



NUMBER Y. 

ALLIANCE WITH ENGLAND.* 

It is a great 'consolation to feel that, by a process hardly 
discernible, right feelings and opinions are restored ; and there is 
no slight pleasure in the consciousness of having contributed, in a 
small degree, to the result. The first warning given in these 
columns on this subject were given before M. Kossuth put his 
foot on our soil, and were excited by no personal feeling with 
regard to him. In fact, I seek the opportunity to disavow most 
distinctly any other than the kindest feeling to this unfortunate 

* National Intelligencer, January 20, 1852. 



gentleman, and to claim credit for nothing but unwavering fidelity 
to certain principles of American policy which his not unnatural 
zeal, and the facility of some' who listened to him, seriously 
endangered. Those principles are, I take it, still the principles 
of the Nation and the Government. Let us all rejoice at their 
new escape. Canada, Cuba, and Hungary have successively 
threatened shipwreck to the American system of neutrality ; the 
currents of sympathy and antipathy, alike dangerous, have rushed 
fiercely along ; and yet, thanks to the pilotage of an ancient day, 
we have avoided all that menaced us. 

Since my last communication M. Kossuth has made several 
speeches — one here, one at Baltimore, and several at Washington ; 
and, what is more material, he has had a speech made to him by 
the Chief Magistrate of the nation. That speech settled the 
question as to the present policy of the Government. Let us, 
now that the immediate risk is past, pause and inquire what is 
the prospect and danger of the future. Is there much liability to 
a recurrence of this sort of spasm ? 

It seems to me that we are in no danger now of the entangle- 
ment of continental European politics. If Louis Napoleon 
consolidates and maintains his power, then are the military 
despotisms of Eastern and Western Europe literally the upper 
and the nether millstones, between which the efforts of revolt must 
be hopelessly crushed. If he falls, as M. Kossuth thinks he must, 
he will fall by violence, and the fierce elements forming that 
strange compound known as French Republicanism will burst out 
in carnage, and at least temporary horrors and desolation. 
American sympathy, to reach M. Kossuth's countrymen, must 
in that event soar very high, or it will sicken as it passes over the 
scenes of Western Europe and the realities of a new French reign 
of terror. In either event, it seems to me, there is no danger 
now of American intervention in the afi"airs of Europe ; for there 
is not, I honestly believe, one sane public man in America who 
would now, since the fall of the French Assembly, put his hand 
on his heart and say he has the least confidence in European 



3'4 

republicanism.* And jet, a few weeks ago, certain presses and 
certain politicians were hard at work in instigating a crusade for 
this very counterfeit and worthless cause. I believe the danger 
has passed ; the dream or the drunkenness is over. M. Kossuth, 
if he appreciate his true position, is in a safer and more decorous 
attitude than when his missionary labors began, that of a fugitive 
from tyranny — the welcome guest of a generous people, and 
nothing more ; and this we owe to the unscrupulous vigor of one 
other man, who a short time ago was the favorite of some 
American sympathisers, and who proves how eminently unworthy 
he, and all like him, are of our sympathy and confidence. It 
looks to me very much as if the friend of liberal institutions, and 
even constitutional monarchies, has little now to do but, as Mr. 
Pitt said after the battle of Marengo, " roll up the map of 
continental Europe." Be its doom what it may, it will at least 
have no attractions for us, genuine habitual republicans. 

How will it be with the only other power. Great Britain, iso- 
lated as she is supposed to have become from the continental 
system ? Are we to afiiliate more closely with her, or are 
the two nations to maintain that attitude of cautious, busi- 
ness-like neutrality or moderate friendliness which has charac- 
terized our intercourse from the time Mr. Adams negotiated 
about the "Western posts with Lord Shelburne, down to the date 
of Mr. Webster's last despatch as to the Prometheus ? The 
far-seeing, nay the most near-sighted statesman [knows that these 
are questions which must be met and answered. And here, too, 
let us observe the change which a few weeks have worked. When 
Mr. Walker spoke at Southampton, and ]\I. Kossuth in New 
York, the predominant idea inculcated was alliance with Great 
Britain for the sake of Hungary ; protests, and, if need be, armed 
intervention against Austria and Russia. England was not to 

* Horace Walpole has a joke at the expense of Freuchmen puzzled b}- repub- 
licanism, which has more than once occui-red to me, in looking on the travesties 
of liberty and religion for the last few years exhibited. He writes to Mr. West : 
" I have a good story to tell you. Washington has instituted a new oi-der, called 
that of Cincinnatus. He sent it to Lafayette. The Parisians cried, ' Diable, 
St. Senatus, voilil un plaisant Saint ! qui est ce qui en a jamais entcndu parler ?" 



35 

ask America fsucli was the programme) to unite Vith her to 
repair the rest of the world, but America was to take the initia- 
tive. Now, since Louis Napoleon's coup d'etat, and the apparition 
to England at no greater distance than the width of the channel 
of an armed and ambitious despotism, the tone is changed. The 
offensive league against Russia is forgotten or postponed ; alliance 
for mutual safety is talked of, the danger being all Great Britain's 
and none of ours, and the solicitation comes to us, not from us. 
The London Times of December 12th, the French military despo- 
tism being then ten days old, has this remarkable language : 

' " At no time, for the last three centuries and a half, has America worn so 
youthful and promising an aspect to this country as at this moment ; never 
has it appeared so much in the light of a friend in need, a land of refuge, 
and our destined partner in many labors and many triumphs. Could we sup- 
pose these islands suddenly planted in the midst of the Atlantic, or the oppo- 
site shores suddenly drawn nearer by some thousand miles ; or could we im- 
agine some yet stranger caprice of fortune restoring the United States to the 
dependence they renounced three quarters of a century since, that would 
hardly express so great an approximation and so great a convergence of in- 
terests as what we now see brought about by more ordinary methods. This 
is the splendid theme of Mr. Walker's address at Manchester." 

The panic exists, with all its unmistakable signs of depression 
of public securities : nor is it unreasonable to the thoughtful 
mind. Louis Napoleon, with a restless soldiery and a fidgetty 
population to back him, may well be tempted some day to repair 
his Boulogne discredit, and make his uncle's pillared monument 
mean something. Nor is the result unreasonable in another 
point of view, for who shall say that the union of military abso- 
lutism with the policy of the ultramontanism of the Roman church 
will not be aggressive towards the only Government within its 
reach whose State religion is that of avowed hostility to Rome ? 
Who shall say that we may not in our generation be called to 
witness what England's great constitutional historian, speaking 
of the past, has called " the agony of the Protestant faith and 
the English name ?"* Shall the apprehension (not unreasonable) 

* "In that memorable year, when the dark cloud gathered round our coasts, 
when Europe stood by in fearful suspense, to behold what should be the result of 



36 

of such a result, should its reality, tempt us into an alliance with 
Great Britain, and hostile activity in her behalf? This is the 
new and only question left of all those which, for the last few 
weeks, have been sprouting up in the public mind. 

Now, there is no subject on which the well-educated and intel- 
ligent American speaks with more real perplexity of spirit than 
our relations with Great Britain. There is a sentiment often un- 
consciously operating, that starts up in every mind of cultivation, 
at the thought of a common language, a common literature, and, to 
a certain point, a common history. Milton and Shakspeare and 
Burke and Chatham are a common inheritance. The names of 
English statesmen were Washington's watchwords at Cambridge. 
Pittsburg and Wilkesbarre are still living, meaning names. We 
are often told this, as a matter of literary and political declama- 
tion ; but we hardly know how substantial a bond of union it is 
between us. Then, too, the enlightened statesman or scholar 
shrinks with disgust from the vulgar anti- Anglicanism which pro- 
trudes itself at town meetings or in trashy newspapers ; the rail- 
lery at the church and the aristocracy and the monarchy of Eng- 
land. Nay, further, there is no one of the thousands who have 
been brought in contact with Englishmen on their own soil, and 
experienced their kind and substantial hospitality — who have found 
themselves, as all Americans may if they choose, literally at home 
in England — there is no one of these whose first impulse it would 
not be to desire closer political union, and to fly to the rescue of 
Great Britain when threatened by the "foreigners" of continental 
Europe. This is what we all feel — I mean those who have tried 
to raise themselves above the low level of prejudice ; but here it 
stops, and practical considerations soon put an end to it. Let men 
of cultivated intelligence, such as Mr. Walker is known to be, feel 

that great cast in the game of human politics, ■what the craft of Rome, the power 
of Philip, the genius of Farnese, could achieve against the Island Queen, with her 
Drakes and Cecils, — in that agony of the Protestant faith and English name, 
they stood the trial of their spirits, -without swerving from their allegiance. It 
was then that the Catholics in every country repaired to the standard of the Lord 
Lieutenant, imploring that they might not be suspected of bartering the national 
independence for their religion itself" — I. Ilallani's Constitutional History, p. 174. 



37 

and reason as they may, they cannot ignore the existence of a pre- 
valent popular feeling in this country against England. Not only 
have the constant railing of politicians, from the days of Jay s 
treaty downwards, not been fruitless, but history has not preserved 
its records entirely in vain. The memories of 1776 and 1814 are 
not extinct. Part of the procession in honor of M. Kossuth m 
this city, at the time he was urging alliance with England, was, 
grotesquely enough, a van carrying all that remains of the Dart- 
moor prisoners. Time and forgetfulness have done something to 
soften these bitter memories; but the popular mind is adverse 
to England, and this without making allowance for the influ- 
ence of Irish antipathy, no small element of political excitement 
always and every where. This may be very wrong m the view of 
the generous Christian statesman, but such the fact indisputably 
is- and no public man dare openly and for an uncertainty defy 
the popular temper on this point. I honestly believe, such is 
my conviction of the extent of popular delusion and prejudice, that 
were the news to come that M. Bonaparte, either as emperor or 
in disguise, had assembled an army under the shadow of his uncle's 
monument at Boulogne, and, with the backing of Austria, Rus- 
sia and the Pope, had landed on the coast of Kent, marched a 
victorious army into London, and, putting Cardinal Wiseman on 
the archiepiscopal throne of Westminster, had mass celebrated m 
the Abbey I believe American demagogues, and perhaps Ameri- 
can crowds and some American statesmen, would rejoice and have 
iubilees over the victory. The vicious Bonapartist enthusiasm of 
thirty years ago, fomented by the poisonous literature of the day, 
could easily be aroused. This is stating the facts {potentia remo- 
tissima) strongly, but I repeat truly. Popular prejudice and sen- 
timent would thus prevent such an affiliation as is now talked of 

so flippantly. . 

But further still. The sagacious public man, who is conscious 
of no such prejudice, sees difficulties of a practical nature in the 
^vay of this consummation. The policy of England has always 
been is now, and forever will be, naturally and properly selfish. 
Those who are known in England as liberal statesmen are espe- 



38 

cially so. There now lies before me a little 'pamphlet, published 
originally in the National Intelligencer of September 15, 1827, 
but written by Mr. Rush, on the death of Mr. Canning, in 
which he speaks of that statesman words which, with more or less 
force, apply to every British Minister and statesman of modern 
times. " Then," says this writer, (in 1823,) " sprang into being 
the liberalism of Mr. Canning. Then, on motives of his own, and 
for objects of his own, was he first seen in these lists. It was not 
in him an individual selfishness. It was British selfishness. This 
was its beginning and its end ; this its inspiring influence and 
only aim. He made it his boast, and it was cause of boast to 
him, that British policy, British interests, the hope of British 
sway, were ever uppermost in his aspirations and his schemes." 
And so practically it is with them all, and so should it be ; and ex- 
treme indeed must be the danger — far more so than it yet is — when 
England, in an alliance even for her own protection, would forget 
her commercial and manufacturing interests, or omit to make a 
penny at our expense. Sharp as Jonathan is reputed to be, he 
will be very apt to be outwitted if he goes out of his way to em- 
brace too closely and to sustain John Bull, even when he is 
getting old and infirm. If free trade is to be the settled policy 
of this country ; if any and all sorts of favorable discrimination, 
not to use the word "protection," are to be rejected as obsolete 
ideas ; if Mr. Walker's notions of the abolition of custom-houses 
and imposition of direct taxes are to be the fashion and the 
system, then indeed, but not till then, can Mr. Walker's ^other 
idea of entente cordiale with Great Britain be practicable. The 
close embrace of Great Britain would be to our interests literally 
the embrace of death. • This is sober, unpictuuesque, unsenti- 
mental truth, and there is no use of disguising it. Hence it is 
that, practically, alliance or closer connexion with England — any 
other relation, I repeat, than that of cautious, business-like, inde- 
pendent friendliness — is out of the question. 

How, then, are we to steer on the yesty waves of current 
foreign politics ? 

A liberal English journalist, speaking of the course of Great 



39 

Britain in relation to the continent, and that too after the pseudo 
election in France, thus boldly defines it : " The part of this 
country is clearly non-interference with the internal affairs of 
France, and acceptance of any settlement of the Government 
without scrutiny of its origin or of the method, however fraudu- 
lent, by which the arrangement may have been effected. The 
moral judgment upon the actions of the last month is a matter 
quite apart from the international relations, and the terms upon 
which intercourse must be held between the Government of this 
country and France. Cordiality cannot he, and quarrel must 
not be. Both are to be deprecated. It is for the sense of honor 
and the prudence of our Government to find the middle point 
between the two."* An American journalist might hesitate, in 
the sympathetic atmosphere which just now envelops him, to 
speak so freely and so boldly ; yet here, in one phrase, are our 
own true relations defined to all the absolutisms of Europe — 
" cordiality cannot be, quarrel must not be." 

The pilotage of an ancient day, depend on it, is the safest yet, 
and the country thinks so. There was some time ago a little 
eruptive pustule, which seemed to indicate that the infection had 
seized the body politic ; but it turns out to have been a healthy 
symptom, a sort of vaccine for the future. But all is now healthy 
again. M. Kossuth's meteoric flight through this our Eastern 
sphere, at which we all looked with wonder, and some of us with 
alarm, is over. It will no doubt illumine the West with -as bright 
a blaze ; but, when the flight is done, somewhere will be found 
lying tranquilly on our soil (this we venture to predict) the 
aerolite that has caused all this wonder and excitement. M. 
Kossuth, duly naturalized of course, may in our day be a dis- 
tinguished delegnte in Congress from some yet undefined Terri- 
tory in the Northwest. The country is safe. There may arise 
(there are some symptoms of it in the dim future) another and 
very different sympathetic spasm, in which another party, one 
which hates Great Britain as much as M. Kossuth loves it, which 

* Londou Examiner, December 27. 



40 

thinks Louis Napoleon's ends justify his means — one which, like 
Count Montalembert, is more swayed by ecclesiastical than poli- 
tical feeling, will seek to agitate popular sentiment anew, and 
instigate another crusade. But the failure of the Hungarian 
experiment, our steadiness under the present temptation, will be 
a precedent then, and to all time, and again save us. 

I say, too, the good sense of the country is on the conservative 
side at last. The wonder is it should ever have gone astray ; 
and my own conviction deliberately is, that, so sound is public 
opinion becoming, now that these distempered visions of Hunga- 
rian and Anglican alliances are passing away, that those public 
men stand safest and most secure in the hearts of reflecting 
people — the masses, too, of this country — who have kept most 
aloof from this pestilent excitement, and on whom no imputation 
rests of having swayed one hair's breadth from the historical 
policy of the Republic, from the day of Washington to this. 



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